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AGNOSTIC 



BY 



Rev. E. D. SMITH, Ph.D. 



PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 

1891. 



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WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 



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Rev. EDWARD D. SMITH, Ph.D. 



PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. 




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PHILADELPHIA : 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 

1891. 









Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

EDWARD D. SMITH. 



NQIONIHSVM 






INTRODUCTION. 



THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED. 

Theke never has been a period in the history of 
human thought when the deep questions of life were 
so fully and universally discussed. With all our 
progress in this direction, we have not yet created 
any new moral obligations. No amendments have 
been offered to the moral law, nor have any been 
necessary to bring it down to date. 

With all the " Mistakes of Moses" those who have 
attempted to point them out have failed to improve 
on his laws, disprove his account of Creation, super- 
sede him, or suppress his influence. 

While others affect an air of knowing all with 
respect to nature and man, they have not answered 
the questions of life as old as Job, nor brought any 
new ones to the forum of public discussion relating to 
man's origin, nature and destiny. Neither have we 
been furnished with a satisfactory answer to these 
questions from their standpoint. 

For a period of twenty-five hundred years the 
leading thinkers of the world have been seeking 
answers to these questions : Who made the world ? 

(3) 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

or what made the world? Whence is matter? 
Whence is life ? From whence is man ? 

This being, endowed with mind and seeking domin- 
ion over nature, — this being, who believes in a past 
without a beginning, and a future without an end — 
whence is he? Ah! whither, whither is he going? 
Is he going any where? Man is the greatest fact 
as well as the greatest factor in history. 

Prof. Huxley says, " The question of questions for 
mankind, the problem which underlies all others, and 
is more deeply interesting than any other, is the as- 
certainment of the place man occupies in nature, 
and his relation to the universe of things." — Maris 
Place in Nature, page 57. But this question has an 
immediate answer, for man is acknowledged as hold- 
ing the highest place in nature, and is succeeding in 
gaining dominion over her. 

The peculiarity of the situation in which man has 
stood through all recorded history is that of a spirit- 
ual Belamy, looking forward by looking backward. 

Man finds himself bound by a natural body to the 
material world, by anatomy and physiology he is 
related to the lower order of animals; but that which 
distinguishes man, as man, is that he is a rational 
and moral being, and as such is cut off from brute 
creation. 

" Man's relation to the universe of things," is a little 
more than "more deeply interesting than all other 
questions." 

Man is no relation to the brute. He is not the 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

product of the law of evolution. The problem deeper 
than any is, What is man's relation to God? 

There is in man, and there has been in him through 
historic times, an idea stronger than an opinion, and 
clearer than a probability, that a great future awaits 
him. 

There are two solutions of the problem of man's 
origin, nature and destiny, the Agnostic and Theistic. 
The third, called the Atheistic, differs in no particular 
from the Agnostic view in its practical results; if 
there is any distinction at all, it is on the side of 
Atheism — for it is more to the credit of morality to 
deny facts than to seek to suppress or slur them. 

The term "Agnostic" is applied by those who use 
it to all those who, while they do not deny that there 
is a God, say they do not know that a God exists. 

That which is back of all things is the unknown 
and the unknowable. Prof. Huxley says "Agnostic- 
ism is a creed, a method, the essence of which lies in 
the application of a single principle." That principle 
is of great antiquity ; it is as old as Socrates, as old as 
the writer who said, "Try all things, hold fast that 
which is good" (Paul), which is simply illustrated in 
the axiom that every man should be able to give a 
reason for the faith that is in him (Peter in part). 
Faith in the unknown! what an object for faith! But 
this is Agnostic faith. 

" This principle," says he, " has two sides. In matters 
of intellect follow your reason as far as it will lead 
you, without regard to any other conclusions. In 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

matters of intellect do not pretend that conclusions 
are certain which are not demonstrated or demon- 
strable." Christianity and Agnosticism, page 43. A 
definition is one thing, its application is another thing. 

A definition which covers the method of Agnostic- 
ism was given by Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, in the 
Homiletic Review, of April 1890: "Agnosticism. — A 
system which enables men to limit the human mind 
without testing its powers, and to reject religion with- 
out investigating its character. It knows everything 
and believes nothing. Infidelity based on inability. 
A familiarity with the unknowable which demon- 
strates it unbelievable. An Agnostic is one who 
believes that he knows, and knows that he does not 
believe." 

The same writer follows this definition with one on 
evolution equally pointed : " Evolution. — A process 
without knowing whence or whither. A system by 
which the environed loses itself in the environment. 
An invention which makes the seed develop what is 
in the soil, not what is in the seed. A descent of the 
man to the brute and then the ascent of the brute to 
man." 

The Agnostic lets nothing get into the intellect 
which does not come through the sense. 

He does not believe in the supernatural origin of 
the natural, and the Theist does not believe in the 
natural origin of man's ideas of those things which are 
above nature. 

Here then is the great battle-field where two forces 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

are contending for victory, the one in the name of 
science without a God, the other in the name of science 
with a God. 

The truth from which we cannot escape by any 
theory, is that we leave this world. Christians believe 
we are going somewhere. A thousand years before 
the natural understanding worked on the problem, 
Job said, " Man dieth and wasteth away, yea man 
giveth up the ghost, and where is he ?" That is the 
question of questions. We do not live here always. 
The beyond may be unknown, but there is a hereafter 
not absolutely unknown. There is an anticipation of 
the future as real and as true as our recollection of 
the past. 

I do not say we know the Infinite, but we know of 
Him. " We know only in part ;" but the part we 
know, that we do know. 

We are on an unexplored river whose source we 
have never seen, whose wide banks in Time we can- 
not span ; whose mouth hides itself in the darkness of 
the valley of Death, and it is lost in the confusing 
scenes on the confines of Eternity. There, however, 
is no current which does not widen and deepen as it 
flows on ; and this current of Christian life, whose 
crested waves are kissed by the light of heaven, rolls 
on to-day as the prophecy of faith being constantly 
fulfilled, until it loses itself in the great ocean of ex- 
istence beyond, where a thousand currents from other 
shores, by us unseen, mingle in a common element, all 
lost, but lost in a higher and fuller reality. 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

What is here written may not be new, but it is at 
present a Misstatement of the main points and the 
result of personal investigation. I^propose to follow 
Peter's advice : " To give an answer to every man 
that asketh, a reason of the hope that is in me, with 
meekness and reverence/' 



CHAPTER I. 

THE AGNOSTIC THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 

/ am not an Agnostic: First: Because his theory of 
the origin of life is, according to his experimental 
method, utterly v:ithout any observed facts or experi- 
mental results to warrant it. 

The law is, " Do not pretend that conclusions are 
certain which are not demonstrable or demonstrated." 

Let us not forget that there is no fact of science 
which is not born of natural law. The breach which 
is supposed to exist between science and faith is an 
imaginary line which Agnostics themselves have 
drawn, in their hasty survey made between the nat- 
ural and spiritual worlds, between reason which they 
use, and the revelation whose fulfillment they refuse to 
admit, but cannot refute, and whose blessings they 
decline to enjoy. 

There is not to-day a clearly demonstrated fact in 
the sciences of biology, geology, or anthropology, which 
even suggests that the Agnostic theory of evolution is 
true. Protoplasm, fossil nor hybrid — the unconscious 
trinity of this school — give no proof of doing any 
violence to the Theistic argument for the supernatural 
origin and destiny of man. 

The first violation of the laws of nature and of 

(0) 



10 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

reason, is at the outset of the Agnostic theory of the 
origin of things. 

The chasm between matter and life has not been 
filled up. That life arose from matter without life is 
absolutely essential to the validity of this theory of 
evolution. Upon it the imaginary synthetical system 
of Herbert Spencer has been constructed. 

One of the most remarkable features of this shad- 
owy philosophy is its disposition to assume such a 
high altitude, that it overlooks the facts which refute 
it. The leaders of this school are always parading 
the humble attitude of their minds toward the great 
world that lies ahead and beyond them ; but they 
never have any difficulty in supplying the data in any 
hiatus of nature in the past. 

They remind one of witnesses in court, who, pos- 
sessed of a knowledge of facts of a damaging charac- 
ter, are ready with the evasive answer, " I do not 
remember." It ought not to be esteemed a mark of 
religious bigotry because a man, in the name of a 
religion that is regenerating the world, calls on the 
so-called scientific men for the material facts by which 
they are endeavoring to overthrow the Christian idea 
of the origin and destiny of man. 

We are disappointed in every answer we receive. 
There is not a verified fact to prove any of their 
theories. 

Take an illustration in the conception of cause. 
From the time of Aristotle, it has not been re- 
garded unscientific to inquire into the first cause of 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 11 

the world. As this principle is universally admitted, 
the Agnostic philosophers must deal with cause in a 
scientific way. This, however, they do only in name. 
This may seem incredible, but to the proof. In an ar- 
ticle on biology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Prof. 
T. H. Huxley discusses as the fourth division of the 
subject, JEtiology. He says, u Morphology, distribu- 
tion, and physiology, investigate the facts of biology ; 
aetiology has for its object the ascertainment of the 
causes of these facts." Now see Mr. Huxley clear the 
chasm of cause. " If," (note the if,) "the hypothesis 
of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen 
from not-living matter; for by hypothesis the condition 
of the globe was at one time such that living matter 
could not have existed in it, life being entirely incom- 
patible with the gaseous state. But living matter 
once originated, (how?) there is no necessity for 
another origination, since the hypothesis postulates 
the unlimited, though, perhaps not indefinite, modi- 
fiability of such matter." " Of the causes which have 
led to the origination of living matter, then, it may 
be said that we know absolutely nothing." Here is a 
noted scientist heading an article with a term includ- 
ing causality: who would not expect an account of. 
causes? Here is a subject without a predicate, a sys- 
tem without a law or any motive power. He not 
only gives no cause, but says that we know nothing 
of any cause ; and he further says, " the fact is, that 
at the present moment there is not a shadow of trust- 
worthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take 



12 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

place, or has taken place, within the period during 
which the existence of life on the globe is recorded.' 7 

These are the scientific stilts by w r hich Agnostics 
straddle the gulf between dead matter and life. 

Put these germless shells between the mill-stones of 
Aristotelian logic, and they would be ground to 
powder. "Do not pretend that conclusions are cer- 
tain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable." 
There was a time when there was no life on the globe, 
when it was, by hypothesis, impossible for life to be : 
then there was a time when there was life, when life 
began to be. Here is an effect without a cause, an 
effect without a preceding adequate cause. Whatever 
is in an effect must have been in a preceding cause, or 
else there must have been introduced from without, 
by a competent power, a new attribute. Life, being, 
must have a cause: whence then is life? It is the 
poor Topsy in the bonds of Agnosticism, "it just 
growed up" — came of itself. 

When we follow on to find how this difficulty is 
overcome, we see the Agnostic act like a Christian — 
where his knowledge ends his faith begins. As one in 
other Dark Ages, he believes that he may know, but 
here believes the impossible that he may know the 
unreasonable. The less he knows of the past the 
more he can believe : he would, nay he does, sneer at 
those who presume to look into the future as he looks 
into the past. With the most complacent air he 
stands on his scientific Pisgah and views the promised 
land of Protoplasm, or gazes down into Bathybius. 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 13 

"If it were given me to look beyond the abyss of 
geologically recorded time to the still more remote 
period when the earth was passing through physical 
and chemical conditions which it can no more see 
again than a man can recall his infancy, I should ex- 
pect to be a witness of the evolution of living proto- 
plasm from not-living matter, — that is the expectation 
to which anological reasoning leads me ; but I would 
beg you once more to recollect that I have no right 
to call my opinion anything more than an act of 
philosophical faith." (T. H. Huxley, Lay Sermons and 
Addresses; pages 366-67.) 

•Philosophical faith is a larger faith than Christian 
faith ; it can believe that a conclusion contains more 
than the premises, or that an effect is greater, and not 
only contains more, but contains something that the 
cause does not contain. 

The readiness with which Agnostics see things in 
"the dim obscurity of the past," is equaled only by 
their ability to see things in the deep. 

Where is life ? They reply : " In the deep ;" " be- 
neath the sea;" "a great sheet of living matter en- 
veloping the whole earth beneath the sea." That 
must have been the sheet knit at the four corners, 
which Peter saw let down from heaven, containing " all 
manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild 
beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air." 
This living sheet is called " Bathybius." Has it any 
existence in fact ? No ; it is the spectre of the Ag- 
nostic's trance ; he sees the sea open, not heaven; he 



14 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

never looks upward and onward, but downward and 
backward. What is there in this name ? Does the 
name Bathybius connote any attributes? No. Is 
it the name of any reality ? No. What, then, is it ? 
It is the filmy veil by which materialists exclude the 
divine light which would give them a vision of the 
true origin of things. 

This basis 'of life might have, been called Aphro- 
bius, froth-life, or better still, Aphronobius, mindless- 
life ; anything will answer the purpose of this school 
but the facts as unfolded in nature and history attest- 
ing the doctrine of so-called religious bigots. That 
was a happy thought — the Slime theory. There in 
the ooze on the earth, from three to five miles deep, 
beneath the sea, simmered our poets and historians, 
our philosophers and statesmen, our Agnostics and 
Christians. What wonderful possibilities lay there 
for ages without manifestation ! Now, when I am 
told that not a thread of this all-encompassing sheet 
can be found, when I am assured by the advanced 
thinkers of this school that " there is not a shadow of 
trustworthy evidence " in favor of this hypothesis, 
then I beg pardon of superior minds for rejecting the 
figments of their imaginations. 

It is "pretending that conclusions are certain' 1 
which have no facts for their demonstration, that 
leads me to reject the Agnostic theory of the origin 
of life. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE AGNOSTIC THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 

In the second place, I am not ar^ Agnostic, because his 
theory of the origin of man is as baseless as his theory 
of the origin of life. 

1. Here, also lie pretends that conclusions are cer- 
tain which are neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. 

The Agnostic knows absolutely nothing about the 
origin of man. He confesses his inability after more 
than fifty years of geological explorations, in compass- 
ing sea and land, to present in an unbroken chain, by 
verified facts, the descended ascent of man from the 
ape or gorilla. There are more than eighteen points 
in the anatomy of man which place him on heights 
inaccessible to the chimpanzee. 

There are, according to the hypothesis of Agnostic 
evolutionists, about twenty-two chasms to be cleared 
before nature produces man. Countless ages were re- 
quired to make the links in this great chain of being, 
and the last chain, the monkey chain, has a missing 
link between him and man. We need not stop to re- 
peat all the well-known difficulties which lie in the 
way of accepting this hypothesis. But when the ad- 
vocates of this doctrine are impatient and abusive 
because those who believe in a personal God, who re- 

(15) 



16 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

veals Himself in him whom He created in His image, 
do not receive their account of man's origin, then 
some objections can be named with propriety. 

Because a strong mind in its profound contemplation 
of nature and her operations may assume an explana- 
tion of its phenomena, that is no reason for nicknaming 
any man who refuses to throw up the best, the real and 
only true account of man's origin. An hypothesis is 
not a logical proposition. It is only a supposition. 
"An hypothesis is any supposition which we may 
make, either without actual evidence, or on evidence 
avowedly insufficient, in order to endeavor to deduce 
from it conclusions in accordance with facts which are 
known to be real, under the idea that if the conclu- 
sions to which the hypothesis leads are known truths, 
the hypothesis itself either must be, or at least is likely 
to be, true." But further, "An hypothesis being a 
mere supposition, there are no other limits to hypothe- 
ses than those of the human imagination. We may, if 
we please, imagine, by way of accounting for an effect, 
some cause of a kind utterly unknown and acting ac- 
cording to a law altogether fictitious." Mill's Logic, 
page 349. 

This use of the imagination in the creation of hy- 
potheses has its fullest application in the interests of 
Agnosticism. 

The hypothesis of " the origin of the species " is an 
nndemonstrated hypothesis. It is an attempt to es- 
tablish in nature the idea of perpetual motion, and 
thereby free the human mind from those constraints 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 17 

which the consciousness of the existence of God puts 
on it. 

The Museum of Natural Science is as full of un- 
proved hypotheses as the Patent Office is of worthless 
models. 

When we turn to the high priests of materialistic 
philosophy, we find them always ready to speak not 
only for their cause, but also against the opponents of 
the doctrine. 

As an illustration of the way their honor is guarded, 
take Mr. Huxley's " Essay on the Origin of the Spe- 
cies." His antipathy is always awakened by the 
appearance of two things in the discussion — the teleo- 
logical argument of theologians, and the theologians 
themselves. 

It gives him great pleasure to announce how Mr. 
Darwin's book is received by all. "Everybody reads 
Mr. Darwin's book, or at least has passed an opinion 
upon its merits or demerits ; pietists, whether lay or 
ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which 
sounds so charitable ; bigots denounce it with bitter 
invectives, old ladies of both sexes consider it a de- 
cidedly dangerous book ; even savans, who have no 
better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to 
show that the author is no better than an ape him- 
self." "The myths of paganism are dead, dead as 
Osiris or Zeus, but the coeval imaginations current 
among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by 
writers whose very name and age are admitted by 
every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately 



18 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

not shared the same fate, but, even at this day, are 
regarded by nine-tenths of the civilized world as 
the authoritative standard of fact, and the criterion 
of the justice of scientific conclusions in all that 
relates to the origin of things, and, among them, of 
species." We learn that "the cosmogony of the semi- 
barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher;" 
that " the lives of seekers after truth have been em- 
bittered by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters;" that 
" extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of 
every science as strangled snakes beside that of Her- 
cules." When this charitable writer has exhausted 
his venom by blowing it against "old ladies of both 
sexes," we have reason to expect that he will give us 
incontrovertible proof of the validity of his or his 
adopted hypothesis. But not so. After a lengthy 
discussion of Darwin's hypothesis, giving a review of 
how it took its present form, he turns on his own 
friend, and as a scientist slays him in a scientific man- 
ner. 

This is the way he does it. "There can be no 
doubt that the method of inquiry which Mr. Darwin 
has adopted, is not only rigorously in accordance with 
the canons of scientific logic, but that it is the only 
adequate method." Having applied the rule of the 
inductive method of Mr. J. S. Mill, he says, " There is 
no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, then, 
but it is another question whether he has fulfilled all 
the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satis- 
factorily proved, in fact, that species may be originated 



WHY I AM NOT AN" AGNOSTIC. 19 

by selection ? That there is such a thing as natural 
selection? That none of the phenomena exhibited 
by species are inconsistent with the origin of species 
in this way ? If these questions can be answered in 
the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the 
ranks of hypothesis into those of proved theories ; but 
so long as the evidence at present adduced falls short 
of enforcing that affirmation, so long, to our minds, 
must the new doctrine be content to remain among 
the former — an extremely valuable, and in the high- 
est degree probable doctrine, indeed the only extant 
hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific 
point of view, but still a hypothesis, and not a proved 
theory of the species." 

"Extinguished theologians" are not afraid of being 
strangled by unproved hypotheses. But we, having 
as much interest in our destiny as we have in our 
origin, are interested in knowing whether we have an 
origin which is prophetic of the high destiny toward 
which we move. 

We are not satisfied with the products of the im- 
agination, its theories nor its prophecies. We have 
no creative instincts. We can discover, invent and 
combine, but we cannot create. We may take our 
knowledge of mud and mind, anatomy and physiology, 
phosphorus, electricity and slime, but out of these we 
can construct no thinking, willing, acting man. 

The link between man and the most highly or- 
ganized ape, the Agnostic has been pleased to name 
" Pithecanthropi." This name is no doubt in accord- 



20 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

ance with the canons of scientific logic, " and old 
ladies of both sexes " might regard the " Pithecan- 
thropi " as a dangerous animal if the rigorously 
scientific Agnostics could exhibit him, or it, (or what 
is it ?) to those who in this case, at least, are willing 
to receive impressions through the natural senses. 

Between man and the chimpanzee there are eigh- 
teen steps taken by the " Pithecanthropi," eighteen 
degrees taken in the "dim obscurity of the past." 
This missing link originated all these distinctive 
peculiarities, passed them up to man, then took his 
departure, leaving not the slightest trace whence he 
came or whither he has gone. What reasons have we 
for rejecting this notion of the origin of man? 

The gulf now existing between man and monkey is 
impassable ; not " a shadow of trustworthy evidence " 
can be offered to prove that any development has ever 
taken place by which the ape acquired, in a single 
particular, the smallest degree of likeness to man. 
Why is it that an evolution which filled the unknown 
past with so many prodigies does not give an exhibi- 
tion of its power in our day ? Why is it that within 
the knowledge of man some instance cannot be forth- 
coming as evidence of progress ? 

Let one of our modern American Agnostics lecture 
on "Skulls," not theological nor biblical, but ape and 
human skulls, and fill up the existing gulf. We de- 
pend on scientists for our facts, and they inform us 
"that no ape, especially no ape of the old world, pre- 
sents so elevated and rounded a contour in the frontal 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 21 

legion as does man. It is in the American forms, es- 
pecially in the genus Pithecia, that we find the great- 
est resemblance to man in this respect. Thus the 
cranial capacity is never less than 55 cubic inches in 
any normal human subject, while in the orang and 
chimpanzee it is but 26 and 27J respectively. " Ency. 
Brit., Yol. II., page 16-i. " While similar as to their 
general arrangement to the human brain, those of the 
higher apes, such as the chimpanzee, are much less 
complex in their convolutions, as well as much less 
both in relative and absolute weight — the weight of a 
gorilla's hardly exceeding 20 ounces, and a man's 
brain hardly weighing less than 32 ounces, although 
the gorilla is considerably the larger animal of the 
two." " The opinion is deeply rooted in modern as in 
ancient thought, that only a distinctively human ele- 
ment of the highest import can account for the sever- 
ance between man and the highest animal below him." 
" Man possesses, and in some way possesses by virtue 
of his superior brain, a power of coordinating the im- 
pressions of his senses, which enables him to understand 
the world he lives in, and by understanding to use, re- 
sist, and even in a measure rule it. No human art 
shows the nature of this human attribute more clearly 
than does language." Ency. Brit., Yol. II., pp. 108 
and 109. 

Here, then, in the sciences of anatomy and physi- 
ology, of apes and anthropology, here in the fields of 
experiment, of weights and measures, we find differ- 
ences which cannot be explained by any known facts. 



22 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

The "hypothetical animal" is as much an unknown 
quantity as all the figments which the Agnostic evo- 
lutionist draws from his imagination, to take the 
place of the facts which " the old ladies of both sexes" 
deem essential for proof. 

Nowhere in the space of more than fifty years of 
research has there been found an ape living, which, 
when compared with the remains of any of the species, 
showed a single variation in skull to warrant the sus- 
picion of the least probability that any approach has 
been made toward the human animal. 

I want facts, bones, fossils, brains. I simply ask for 
one clearly demonstrated fact, one instance where a 
step, the shortest possible, has been taken, to lead me 
to believe we are from beneath. I cannot build a 
pedestal out of probabilities, on which to stand, to> 
see, as I am told, "in the dim obscurity of the past," 
these great changes take place. 

It is not on what is "probable," not on what is alone 
" reasonable to suppose," nor on what is " no doubt 
very likely," that we who are walking toward the 
golden gate of the 20th century, care to rest our hope 
of the great future. 

It is not what we might expect to see in the past, if 
we could look into it, but what our present knowledge 
warns us that we may see in the future, that leads us 
to refuse to rest satisfied without living for that future 
which the Agnostic seeks to veil from our eyes by a 
curtain woven out of probabilities and presupposi- 
tions, and painted over with the grotesque figments of 
a too highly developed scientific imagination. 



WHY I AM NOT AX AGNOSTIC. 23 

The Agnostic builds his system on an unknown 
past, but he denies the historical past which makes a 
moral crisis in the future. He has no fact at hand to lay 
at the foundation of the temple of nature in which he 
worships; he has no light by which he discerns across 
the chasm the organic and vital relations of man to 
his lowly antecedents; but he does not hesitate to con- 
struct imaginary bridges over this chasm which has 
always yawned between them. 

As he passes with perfect ease from dead matter to 
life, so he passes from life to organism, from organism 
to instinct, from instinct to mind, without suspecting 
that he is taking in effects without adequate causes. 

All that is necessary to awaken a philosophical 
faith is a look into the past, when lo! the Agnostic 
beholds "the substance of things hoped for," living 
matter arising from not-living matter. This looking 
back is made necessary by a rigorously logical scien- 
tific imagination. Mr. Tyndall can look back and 
begin where Mr. Huxley left off*. Addressing an 
audience at Birmingham, he says: ■" If to any of us 
were given the privilege of looking back through the 
aeons across which life has crept toward its present 
outcome, his vision would ultimately reach a point 
where the progenitors of this assembly could not be 
called human. From that humble society, through 
the interaction of its members and storing up of the 
best qualities, a better emerged, from this again a 
better still, until at length " — no doubt at great length 
— " by the integration of infinitesimals through ages 



24 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

of amelioration, we came to be what we are to-day." 
This is the kind of reasoning, unsupported by a single 
fact, on which grounds I am asked to surrender the 
Christian doctrine of the origin of man. 

2. I am not an Agnostic, because his theory to ac- 
count for the origin of man's intellectual and moral 
nature is as illogical as his theory to account for the 
organic differences between man and the ape. 

That these mighty powers should lie latent in vari- 
ous species through which they are assumed to have 
passed, is more incredible than the Mosaic account of 
creation. 

Sir Wm. Hamilton has said that " the mind of man 
is separated from that of the brute by the whole 
diameter of being." The gift of speech, the possession 
of ideas, and the constructive elements, are vast 
chasms which utterly hold man apart from the brute. 

The fact that man recognizes himself as a personal 
being, that he possesses self-consciousness, is without 
any suggestion in or from. his brute companions. The 
nature and function of conscience is a bald and naked 
rock pushed up in the nature of things without any 
preceding impulses sufficiently strong to account for 
their uprising at so late a stage in the evolution of the 
animal kingdom. 

The whole stretch of history and the whole volume 
of nature furnish not a single instance where any im- 
pulse or instinct has advanced to the position of a 
human attribute. 

Conscience, that root of the moral life which in 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 25 

heaven's light cannot always be dwarfed, which in the 
nature of things cannot be "uprooted nor suppressed ; 
Conscience, that better angel, standing on the un- 
obscured heights of man's spiritual nature, points with 
prophetic warning to a future, with so much certainty 
as to compel the assent of reason to the reality of a 
second life, which Agnosticism does not attempt to ex- 
plain. 



CHAPTER III. 

* 

CONCLUSIONS INVOLVED IN THESE THEORIES. 

Thirdly : I am not an Agnostic, because the Agnostic 
will not admit all the conclusions to which he is led 
on the supposition that his hypothesis is demonstrable 
or demonstrated. 

1. If the hypothesis of Agnostic evolution is true, 
then the present state of the world is the legitimate 
outcome of the primordial germs lying back of all 
things. All that is, is right and natural. Whatever 
is, has been evolved. The point we now occupy has 
been reached by natural law, to whose operations 
nothing can be added, and from whose results there 
can be taken no appeal. If any man seeks to add, to 
him nature will add her plagues; if he takes from her 
any right, from him will be taken the blessings writ- 
ten in the uninspired and letterless pages of nature. 

If it is scientific to stand on this side of the great 
gulf between man and the chimpanzee and span it by 
imaginary expedients, then cross over and unite the 
broken chain to make man one with the ape in origin — 
then still, following the narrowing stream upward over 
cataracts and under through subterranean passages, 
leaping the blanks where there is no stream, where 
there is no organism and no life — when this is done in 

(26) 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 27 

the name of science, is it unscientific for man, with the 
idea and longing for immortality, to hope to realize 
that idea and satisfy that longing ? If there was a 
time when there was no life and life began to be, a 
time when there was no organism and life took on the 
organic, then the instinctive and intellectual, is it 
reasonable to suppose that this superior product of 
unnumbered ages has been deceived by being qualified 
with the attribute of immortality ? If — mark the ifs 
of Agnosticism — yes, if there was a time when the 
mighty forces of mind, conscience and spirit now dis- 
played in commerce, science, education, morals and 
religion were wrapped up in unfelt potentiality in the 
tadpole as he swam in his little pond, who can fore- 
tell how far man in other and better conditions in 
other ages will transcend his present state of being? 

The poor tadpole w r as an Agnostic, but after long 
ages, "by the integration of infinitesimals through 
ages of amelioration," he came to be an ape. 

The ape was an Agnostic. Let an Agnostic stand 
on the human side of the abyss and shout across to 
his scientific antecedent, " Whence is man? Whence 
am I? Whither?" The only answer he would re- 
ceive would be the unintelligible and mocking sounds 
"Cha! Cha!! Cha!!" Ah, me! he knows nothing 
either of the past or the future. We have no record 
of his anticipations, no record prophesying his finally 
attaining perpendicularity, speech, language, politics, 
morals, religion and immortality. 

Paul might have furnished him with a fitting 



28 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

epitome of his history in the following parody on his 
own experience: "When I was an ape I chattered as 
an ape, I thought as an ape, I reasoned as an ape: but 
when I evolved into a man, I put away apish things." 
The Pithecanthropi, where is he? In the words of 
Mark Twain at the tomb of Adam, we may say "he 
died six thousand brief summers before we were born, 
but his loss is our eternal gain." He has left no foot- 
prints on the rocks of Time. He has come and gone 
"leaving not a wreck behind." 

The truth is that the past is as much an unknown, 
as the Agnostic conceives it, as the future is, as the 
Christian conceives it. But as Christianity is rigidly 
scientific, and has a method peculiar to itself, the 
proof of its principles depends not only on sense- 
perception, but also on spiritual susceptibility. 

The foregoing are some of the reasons from the 
standpoint of an Agnostic why I am not one of them. 

2. The Theistic standpoint is not held without 
reason. 

The Agnostic has no future. He denies all reality 
to that state. He says, if there is such a state we know 
nothing about it. Lying outside the tread-mill of this 
little world there is no state of being. There is gross 
darkness there. If we are immortal, and if beyond 
the natural vision there is an eternal God, in them the 
Agnostic does not believe, of them he knows nothing, 
neither does he care. 

There are intuitions in man as native and irrepress- 
ible as instinct in the brute. 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 20 

There are three ideas as old as the oldest historical 
records: they are an inheritance of which we need not 
be ashamed. These reigning ideas are Freedom, Im- 
mortality, and God. 

The first finds its root in the feeling of responsibility; 
that root draws its life from conscience, the a priore 
ground of all morality. The second idea is born of an 
aspiration for a life of moral freedom, of virtue with- 
out alloy. The last is the real ideal of Being and Be- 
coming, " The Was and Is, and Is to come " — the 
Perfect God who by revelation, intuition and reflec- 
tion is but imperfectly known. 

When Immanuel Kant asked the greatest questions 
ever put to the human reason, he said : " "What can 
I know ? What ought I to do ? What may I 
hope?" The answers to these he found alone in the 
reality of freedom, immortality and God. 

There is no civilization where these ideas are not 
active, that is not stagnant. They have given birth 
to all the mighty forces which are now being mar- 
shaled for the conquest of the world, for the coming 
Golden Age. 

Men have raked among the mouldering symbols 
and thumbed the decaying records of outworn re- 
ligions for the faintest signs of an eternal hope. With 
lighted torches they have wandered through the 
crumbling chambers of ancient pyramids and temples 
for the speechless memorials of man's faith in im- 
mortality. 

While human generations have come and gone 



80 WHY I AM NOT AN" AGNOSTIC. 

" without a whisper from the other shore/' human 
aspiration has laid hold instinctively of the slighest 
intimations of a future state. But when a voice from 
heaven like the voice of many waters breaks on the 
shores of Time and shouts a life to come, when the 
Son of Man sends a ray of light heavenward dispelling 
the darkness and revealing the better country, then 
those who found a whole philosophy of life on what 
they suppose, and do not know, charge believers in 
revelation with superstition and fetishism. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CHRISTIAN THEORY. — HISTORICAL FACTS. 

t o 1 1 r ih ly : I am not an Agnostic, but a m a Ch r is t ia n , 

because the history of the world for sixty centuries 
has bee it unfolding under the controlling influence of 
the three great ideas ice have named: i. e. Freedom, 
Immortality and God. 

1. The account of the origin of man as given in 
Genesis is the only one by which the events of history 
can be satisfactorily explained. 

Every hypothesis carrying in it principles not in 
harmony with revelation has failed as an explanation. 
In his address on Mars Hill, Paul announced a doc- 
trine of man which no modern scientist of the Agnos- 
tic school can refute. 

Every well authenticated fact in anthropology, 
philology and comparative theology, is proof of the 
great truth "that God hath made of one blood all 
nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, 
and hath determined the times before appointed, and 
the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek 
the Lord, if haply they might find him. though he be 
not far from every one of us." Volumes are con- 
tained in this sentence — the origin and unity of the 

(31) 



32 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

race, God's purpose in their creation, their mutual 
dependence and their superior destiny. 

Yes, " by the integration of infinitesimals through 
ages of amelioration," we are coming nearer the truths 
of the Bible. 

Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but 
that which is natural, and afterward that which is 
spiritual; so the Old Testament opens with the crea- 
tion of the natural first, then is man made in the im- 
age of his Maker, and man becomes a living soul. 
From the day in which man was so made, revelation 
has led mankind progressively toward the spiritual and 
eternal. 

The whence and whither are answered in the vol- 
ume of the Book. 

No important question bearing on the well-being of 
man for this life and the life to come is left unasked 
or unanswered here. 

If any man loves virtue, if he longs for immortality, 
here he may find the conditions to their attainment. 

The Bible has no quarrel with those who love good 
order. Not a law is laid down for man's obedience 
which is not necessary for his highest well-being were 
there no God to enforce its sanctions. 

There is, therefore, not a question now agitating the 
human mind which has not a more intelligible answer, 
and one corresponding better with actual conditions, 
than has been proposed by Agnostics or atheists. 
There is a moral earnestness in the Scriptures found 
nowhere in any sacred book of any other religion. 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 33 

In this record there is not a missing link. In four 
words its whole purpose may be expressed; those 
words are these, From God to God. This is the ori- 
gin and destiny of man. Why does not the Agnostic 
originate a new moral law ? How did it happen that 
the religion of the Hebrews did not follow in the 
beaten track of a more ancient faith ? What particu- 
lar power or providence isolated them? preserved 
them and yet advanced them? threw the light ahead 
of them and ever beckoned them onward? Nature 
hath not so dealt with any people. "God hath not so 
dealt with any nation." 

Did Moses make a mistake in giving the Ten Com- 
mandments? Did he do wrong in leading from slav- 
ery to freedom " about six hundred thousand on foot 
that were men, besides children? " 

Will the Agnostic tell how it came to pass that all 
through antiquity there was no nation under a law 
such as that given by Moses? 

The moral law was as much for man's good as God 7 s 
glory; the glory was in the law, and in the good se- 
cured for man in his obedience to the law. 

No individual nor nation was punished in Old 
Testament times by divine authority, except on moral 
gfounds. No individual nor nation was commanded 
to do anything which did not take into account the 
well-being of the individual or nation. The God of 
the Old Testament is a just God. It is dishonest quib- 
bling to speak of an unjust God. If there is a God, He 
must be just. The conception involves the perfection 



34 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

of His attributes. I am told that I cannot know God, 
if there is one, because I am finite and He is infinite. 
An Agnostic has put the question thus, " Is it possible 
for the human mind to conceive of an infinite per- 
sonal Being?" Yes, the very terms of the question 
involve the conception. The human mind has all 
the categories of such a Being. We believe that space. 
is without limit. No man is rash enough to affirm 
that it is not, yet he cannot prove that it is not 
limited. If we could travel in one direction forever, 
we believe that we would never reach a boundary. 
We cannot conceive of the cessation of time. We 
have an idea of infinite duration and infinite exten- 
sion. 

We are furnished with certain senses by which we 
enter into relations with the external world; but it 
would make no difference how keen our sense of sight, 
we can never see a sound. If we were born blind 
we could not expect to see with the sense of touch. 
u Every member has not the same office," — that is a 
scientific statement made by a Christian long before, 
there was a science of Physiology treating of the or- 
gans of the human body and their functions. A spirit- 
ual sense for spiritual things. Every student in phil- 
osophy is aware of the claim made by some thinkers, 
of the possible existence of many senses. No amount 
of credulity destroys the scientific accuracy of the laws 
of the heavenly bodies, nor does it sweep from im- 
mensity the burning worlds that roll far beyond the 
reach of natural vision. There is a method of ap- 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 35 

proach to the spiritual world, there is an experience 
of a kind peculiar to itself by which another world, as 
full of reality as this, is held in the veracity and unity 
of its being. 

If the conscience is not seared, it is susceptible to 
spiritual influences. The way in which the con- 
sciousness of man may be infused with the spirit of 
truth is described in a book of an exact scientific 
character. An experimental method, as exacting as 
any formula in chemistry, guarantees a certain 
spiritual product as real as any precipitate. 

Our conscience and faith faculty give us incontro- 
vertible evidence of the moral and spiritual qualities 
of any law of the Lord or of any of His promises. 
What is necessary is, as in any science, to make the 
experiment according to the law. 

" He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath 
not the Son of God, hath not life." That is the re- 
sult of contact and possession, indisputable, permanent 
and assuring. 

" If we receive the witness of men, the witness of 
God is greater, for he that believeth in the Son hath 
the witness in himself." This witness is the one that 
ranks higher than ordinances, or than the acceptation 
if any theological formula, or any formal declaration 
of faith in any number of articles of religion. This 
witness is the only one which will stand unabashed in 
any court of inquiry, set up by Agnosticism. It is an 
inner experience, personal, vital, evidential and abid- 
ing; and until the Agnostic is willing to receive 



86 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

higher truths through the higher senses of his spirit- 
ual nature this kind of evidence will remain insuffi- 
cient. 

We know God. "This is life eternal, that they 
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom thou hast sent. We do not comprehend God. 
"Who hath known the mind of the Lord?" "For 
His understanding is infinite." 

We believe therefore with Moses, Aristotle, Socra- 
tes, Plato and Kant, that God is the First Cause, and 
that our immortality is the final cause of our creation. 
It is not enough to satisfy the reason, the conscience 
and the heart to say, If there is a God he is unknown. 
There is so much and too much involved in the possi- 
bility of His existence, even on natural grounds, that 
a man ought to be able to say, " I know there is no 
God." No other answer can relieve conscience of its 
mission of pointing to the great White Throne. 

The material cause, the formal cause, the efficient 
cause, and the final cause, are an impregnable rock 
on which the Christian can rest his rational defense 
of the existence of a personal God. Natural theology 
will never be displaced in any complete statement of 
revealed religion. Final causes will always play an 
important part in the argument for the being of God. 
St. Paul does not undervalue this point of view, for 
he expresses the thought in all its fulness, carrying it 
to its application. "The invisible things of Him 
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
understood by the things that are made, even His 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 37 

eternal power and God-head, so that they are without 
excuse." 

Yonder at the foot of Mars Hill we might see 
Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Paul sign 
that creed in the name of the two -fold manifestation 
of God in nature and revelation. Here, then, on 
heights above the clouds of darkness and sin, of doubt 
and death, Faith builds her shrine to Duty, Immor- 
tality and God. 

Eevelation closes as it opens, with man in commun- 
ion with God. I see nothing so monstrous in the law 
or purpose of Him who calls mankind to glory and 
virtue. It is this supreme aim over-riding all others 
which leads me to refuse to be an Agnostic, and to 
profess to be a firm believer in the law that makes for 
righteousness. 

After all, we have historical grounds on which to 
base our faith. Here are records covering the history 
of the world for one hundred and twenty generations, 
from Eden to Patmos, and there is not a well-authen- 
ticated fact or event in profane history to contradict 
the historical events in the Old Testament covering a 
period of 3600 years. Its continuity cannot be 
broken. Through that long time there runs a pur- 
pose, the current of a Will, the white light of the 
Supreme Eeason. 

Against that purpose neither individuals nor na- 
tions have been able to stand. The moral and histor- 
ical unity of this purpose is unbroken through six 
thousand years. 



38 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

During all that time " the heathen have raged and 
people imaged a vain thing, the kings of the earth 
have set themselves against the Lord and against His 
anointed," but He has "dashed them in pieces as a 
potter's vessel." 

Men may seek to break this mighty chain of events, 
but they cannot displace a necessary link. 

We are where we are and what we are to-day in 
morality, in intelligence, science, art and politics, be- 
cause we are the effects of the greatest causes, causes 
which had their beginning in God. We are links in 
an unbroken chain fastened yonder in the beginning 
to the immovable rock of the Divine purpose, and we 
are willing to abide our fate as that purpose comes on 
through the past, stretching onward past Sinai, Olivet 
and Calvary, and downward to us, anchoring all at last 
to the shore of the better country. 

A most remarkable fact in the history of human 
inquiry is found in the deep and serious search after 
God before the coming of Christ, but when He de- 
clared the Father then men began to deny the exist- 
ence of a God ; at the same time they attempt to ex- 
plain the supernatural on natural grounds. 

Let them explain how thirty -six authors writing 
sixty-six books, whose records cover a period of sixteen 
centuries, could preserve absolute moral and historical 
unity. 

Let them show how it was possible for those writers 
to manifest a miraculous knowledge of men and prin- 
ciples. 



WHY I AM NOT AX AGNOSTIC. 39 

The civilization we enjoy is the product of the 
facts, events and principles we have named. The fall 
of man, the flood, the call of Abraham, the appoint- 
ment of Moses as the founder of the new order of 
worship, the conquest of Canaan, the establishment of 
the throne of David, the institution of the prophetic 
office, the overthrow of the Jewish nation, the coming 
of Christ, the nature of His mission, — these and a 
thousand other causes have woven their effects through 
and through all the institutions of modern times. It 
is their influence, widening and deepening, for good, 
that overpowers our credulity and awakens our faith. 

We are not compelled to bridge our gulfs, we do 
not need to supply suppositions. The end is in the 
beginning. The beginning is the germinal point of 
futurity, temporal and eternal. 

Agnostics seek to span gulfs in nature. They can 
take on os innorninatum they have picked up in the 
jungles of materialism and restore the skeleton of an 
utterly extinct species; but when they come to a book 
which teaches man's accountability to God, then they 
seek to make breaches in this indestructible wall of 
the truth. 

2. (Results.) I am not an Agnostic, and am a be- 
liever in the Christian idea of man's origin and destiny, 
because the Temple of Learning has been built by the 
Church. The golden candlestick with its seven 
branches of knowledge has been made and lighted by 
the Church. Wherever the Christian idea goes, there 
also follows the pure light of a moral life. 



40 WHY I AI .NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

Wherever there has been a nation without the con- 
ception of a personal God, there was a nation without 
morality and without hope. 

There is not a science taught anywhere that was 
not first discovered by a man who believed in a 
personal God. Neither is there to-day, without a 
single exception, a man of learning, known as such 
to the world, who did not acquire that learning in 
institutions founded by or under the influence of the 
Church. 

The corner-stone of the university in which a mod* 
ern Agnostic laid the foundation of all he knows, was 
squared and placed there by u extinguished theolog- 
ians, who lie about the cradle of every science like 
strangled serpents about the cradle of Hercules." 
These men sitting in the lap of the mother Church 
have amused themselves in turning the leaves of the 
great book of nature, and becoming fascinated with its 
glowing pictures, look up into the face of their 
mother, saying : " We owe our intellectual birth to 
you ; the Alpha and Omega of our knowledge we have 
acquired in your nursery ; but now we turn to nature. 
We read the development of our bodies in Bathybius, 
and traversing the twenty-two great epochs of evolu- 
tion, we find ourselves of the earth earthy. We know 
nothing of the God of whom you speak. We are 
Agnostics." 

When men say that they do not know whence we 
are, and act as though they knew we came "up 
through great tribulation " from the ape, that we did 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 41 

not come from God, then downright atheism is the 
true descriptive term for them. 

When men say that they do not know that there is 
a God, and yet live on the principle that they know 
there is not a God, their professed ignorance is the 
shallowest pretence. Their whole system is negative 
and destructive. 

They are dependent on Christian literature for their 
terms and definitions. The term Agnostic has a de» 
rivation worthy of a better application. St. Paul 
spoke to the Athenians of an Unknown God'. On 
the Agnostic side it is a-theism, m-fidelity, wn-belief, 
tm-known. With these minus quantities in the prob- 
lem of life, is there not good reason for rejecting the 
solution given by Agnosticism ? 



CHAPTER V. 

CHRISTIAN THEORY. — EXPERIMENTAL METHOD. 

Fifthly: I am not an Agnostic, hut a believer in the 
orthodox creed, because it is the aggregate of the great 
truths of the Scriptures, and because the Scriptures 
themselves set forth their truth on scientific principles. 

1. No man can do away with the high moral aim 
set forth in the Scriptures. 

St. Paul expresses that aim when he writes to Titus. 
He declares himself to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, 
according to the faith of God's elect, and the knowl- 
edge of the truth which leads to godliness. That is 
the aim of all Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation. 

Peter says that God's " divine power hath given 
unto us all things that pertain unto life and- godliness, 
through the knowledge of him that hath called us to 
glory and virtue." 

What power other than the power of the Spirit of 
God preserved this absolute unanimity from the Gar- 
den to the Cross ? 

How does it happen that no two heathen moralists 
agree throughout their systems as to what is the foun- 
dation of morality ? How has it happened that thir- 
ty-six men, differing widely in temperament and train- 
ing, under every variety of circumstance and age, as 

(42) 



WHY I AM NOT AS AGNOSTIC. 43 

lawgivers, prophets, kings, priests and apostles, when 
speaking in the name of God, are as completely one as 
though the Bible had been written by one man? No 
other position is tenable but this one : The truth is 
given in every age under the influence of "the self- 
same spirit." It is not the aim of the Scriptures to 
make man good through the overshadowing power of 
God. Here is the evidence of the scientific method. 
As it is the Word, it seeks to impart knowledge. It 
encourages search after truth. Jesus says, "Search 
the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life, and these are they that testify of me/' 

Two sentences used by Mr. Huxley to express his 
conception of the true method of investigation are 
taken from no heathen logician nor scientist, but from 
the Bible. "Prove all things, hold fast that which is 
good." "Be ready always to give an answer to every 
man that asketh jovl a reason of the hope that is in 
you with meekness and reverence." You are to be 
always ready, you are to give a reason in the right 
spirit. It would be monstrous if the highest natural 
power we have given us to distinguish us from the 
brute could not be used to enforce our claims to a 
better destiny and one of a spiritual nature. 

The Bible invites to investigation. It urges the 
use of reason. It admonishes men to " think on these 
things." 

No scientific work by any Agnostic pursues more 
faithfully the experimental method than do the New 
Testament writers. 



44 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

They begin at a common point with the scientist, at 
the senses. Where that kind of proof is available, 
they give it. They appeal to the senses in setting 
forth the reality of the incarnation, the crucifixion, 
and resurrection. 

The senses of seeing, hearing and touch have their 
evidences set forth in minutest particularity. 

The testimony of John is given in a more concise 
form than any evidence for any fact or event, or for 
the existence of any historical character known. 
" That which was from the beginning, which we have 
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the 
Word of Life, that which we have seen and heard de- 
clare we unto you." Unexaggerated, simple and 
direct statement of a fact in experience without its 
equal anywhere. No nervous, fanatical appeal to any 
of the accompaniments of the hallucinations of super- 
stition. He writes with equal clearness on the cruci- 
fixion. There is no rational ground in his gospel for 
the antiquated docetic subterfuge of Agnosticism. 
lie says that " when the soldiers came to Jesus and 
saw that He was dead already, they brake not his legs, 
but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, 
and forthwith came there out blood and water; and 
he that saw it bare record, and his record is true, and 
he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." 

Doubting Thomas had his skepticism removed by 
direct testimony of the senses, for when he had said, 
" Except I shall see in his hands the prints of the nails, 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 45 

and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe," 
" then eight days after when they were within, and 
Thomas with them, Jesus appeared in their midst, 
and said unto Thomas, Eeach hither thy finger and 
behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand and 
thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believ- 
ing. And Thomas answered and said, My Lord and 
my God. Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou 
hast seen me, thou hast believed ; blessed are thev 
that have not seen and have believed." 

Now I have introduced this testimony for a two- 
fold purpose, to show, in the first place, that due im- 
portance is given the testimony of the senses, and to 
show, in the second place, how skeptics are driven 
from one indefensible position to another. 

If the testimony for the resurrection of Jesus is too 
strong for the Agnostic, then, as in the case of Mr. 
Huxley, he denies the reality of the death of Jesus, 
insinuates that he was in a trance, that he was laid 
away in a place almost favorable to resuscitation — in 
fact, there was no death and consequently no resur- 
rection. The author of Eobert Elsmere denies the 
resurrection. The death of Jesus was real, it would 
lose its moral force otherwise. But it is not necessarv 
for the success of Eobert Elsmere's theology that^Jesus 
arise from the dead. There is no atonement in his 
scheme of redemption. 

If the gospel in its entire scope was not so full of 
themes that can be kept aloof from the Cross, we 
would be the more surprised at the studied silence of 



46 WHY I AM NOT AX AGNOSTIC. 

those men who profess to preach Jesus, without 
preaching "Jesus and the resurrection." With the 
Jews and disciples there was no doubt as to Jesus hav- 
ing died. If Pilate " marvelled if he were already 
dead/' it was because he did not consider the brutal 
treatment to which Christ was subjected during his 
trial, as well as the particularly discriminating state- 
ment of being pierced with a lance. 

Early in His ministry Jesus began to teach that He 
" must suffer many things and be delivered to be put 
to death and rise again the third day." Bach of the 
four Gospels reaches its climax at the Crucifixion and 
Eesurrection of Jesus. 

No facts of history are better authenticated than 
these two facts. Peter sums up all the evidence in his 
address before Cornelius : " We are witnesses of all 
things which he did both in the land of the Jews and 
in Jerusalem ; whom they slew and hanged on a tree. 
Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him 
openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen 
before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with 
Him after He arose from the dead." 

This is the witness of men, unmistakable, incon- 
trovertible. 

Jesus lived among them in the land of the Jews. 
He taught, "He spake as never man spake;" He 
taught that He would be crucified, and that he would 
be crucified for a specific purpose; that he would be 
buried, and the third day be raised from the dead. 
His disciples believed His word. They taught, not 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. -47 

that tliey believed that " He was made flesh and dwelt 
among men," and then was crucified, died and was 
buried and rose again, but that they knew these things 
to have occurred — acquired this knowledge under 
like conditions that men acquire all knowledge of 
natural things. 

While, therefore, " He was made, of the seed of 
David according to the flesh, He is declared to be the 
Son of God with power, according to the spirit of 
holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.'' 

2. This, I say again, is the witness of men. At this 
point we are left to higher influences, to the doubt- 
dissolving power of the Gospel, to the effect of the 
truth that makes free, and makes for righteousness on 
conditions reasonable and w r ithin the reach of all. 
There is a greater witness than that of men, not sepa- 
rate and apart from their testimony, but higher and 
inner testimony. " If we receive the witness of men, 
witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, 
which he hath testified of His Son, He that believeth 
on the Son of God hath the witness in himself." 

Through the senses those who lived when Christ 
lived received the testimony or evidence of the real- ' 
ity of His existence and the particular events which 
place His " name above every name." 

The understanding is specially qualified for its 
work. As men use the telescope to discern distant 
bodies, so men have their spiritual discernment aided 
by the Spirit of God. The understanding thus quali- 
fied is called " spiritual understanding," and as there 



48 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

are heavenly bodies far beyond the reach of the un- 
aided natural vision, and no amount of doubt can do 
away with their reality, so there are truths which no 
man can see until he submits to the conditions and 
applies the means offered him for their discernment. 
The spiritual understanding has a knowledge peculiar 
to itself; its law is given by John in his first epistle, 
11 For we know that the Son of God is come, and hath 
given us an understanding, that we may know Him 
that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in 
His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eter- 
nal life." 

Now while proof by the bodily senses is impossible 
in our day for the reality of the existence of Christ in 
the flesh, w r e may receive testimony equally convinc- 
ing. There are moral truths, and we have a faculty 
by which to discern them. There are spiritual 
truths, yea, " spiritual things," we have some way of 
coming to a knowledge of them. 

The Bible is the claimant for their possession, li 
is the source for the knowledge of their understanding. 
St. Paul is true to science when he says "that the 
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, 
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually 
discerned." 

The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to 
the natural man. It is the man born again who 
knoivs the truth. It is not " Higher Criticism," nor 
u New Theology," nor an independent " Christian 
Self-consciousness," but the new man. The best evi- 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 49 

dence any man can have of the resurrection and of his 
own immortality is his regeneration. He who is born 
again both sees and enters into the kingdom of God. 
Here then is the truth of the whole controversy. The 
moral nature of man needs renewal. 

The Gospels propose certain spiritual results: re- 
demption from sin by faith in Jesus Christ, personal 
assurance of salvation through the appropriation by 
the individual, of the merits of the atoning sacrifice 
of Jesus Christ. No other conception has met with 
so much favor among the earnest students of the life 
and doctrine of Jesus. All views of Him lower than 
the one we have given, have failed to secure many 
disciples. 

Every form which the doctrine of the mere human- 
ity of Jesus has taken, has never had enough influence 
to develop a large communion ; but on the other hand, 
every denomination which has laid down as its found- 
ation the doctrine of a depravity deep enough to re- 
quire the sacrifice of the Son of God, the doctrines of 
His Divinity, of His death as a vicarious sacrifice, of 
His resurrection from the dead, of salvation from sin 
and the wrath to come by faith in His name, — these, 
and none but these, have met with great success. 

Col. E. G. Ingersoll says, " To-day the intelligence 
of the world denies the miraculous." There never 
was a time when so many intelligent people believed 
in the miraculous. Where is the intelligence of the 
world, if it is not where the Christian religion throws 
its light? 



50 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

It might be supposed to be in those institutions 
founded by the Church for the promotion of learning 
of the highest grade, secular as well as religious. The 
intelligence of the world is found in those religious 
institutions, colleges and universities, where Atheists 
and Agnostics received their intellectual inspiration 
and mental development, which they are putting to 
not a very complimentary use. 

Why do not the Agnostics give of their means to 
found institutions of learning for the spread of their 
so-called superior doctrines? If the intelligence of 
the world denies the miraculous, why does it not 
compete with that lower degree of intelligence which 
is in advance of it in founding institutions of learning 
and charitv? 

How does it happen that the believers in the mirac- 
ulous have hundreds of colleges and universities, and 
thousands of professors, while Agnostics have not one 
college or school established as a distinctively Agnos- 
tic institution? 

Equally exaggerated is another inconsiderate state- 
ment of the same writer, that "the foundation of 
Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared, and the 
entire fabric must fall." 

Contrast with this remark that of the Hon. W. E. 
Gladstone : " Talk of questions of the day, there is but 
one question, and that is the Gospel. It can and will 
correct everything that needs correction. All men at 
the head of great movements are Christian men. 
During the many years I was in the cabinet I was 



WHY I AM N'OT AN AGNOSTIC. 51 

brought into association with sixty master minds, and 
all but five of them were Christians. My only hope 
for the world is bringing the human mind into contact 
with divine revelation." The Gospel and Person of 
Christ are the all-absorbing questions of the day. 

Eichard Rothe, the profoundest metaphysician and 
moralist Germany has recently produced, wrote, " I 
know no other firm ground on which I could anchor 
my whole being, particularly my speculations, except 
that historical phenomenon, Jesus Christ. He is to me 
the unimpeachable Holy of Holies of humanity, the 
highest being known to man, and a sun-rising in his- 
tory, whence has come the light by which we see the 
world." 

Here then, "in the volume of the book it is writ- 
ten," the last, the full, the necessary truth. Here is a 
destiny in keeping with an origin and nature such as 
man can accept, of which he need not be ashamed, 
of which he has deemed himself worthy, of which he 
finds himself possessed. 

Here is a Person standing in the forefront of more 
than eighteen centuries, and directing by the power of 
His life, the purity of His teachings, and the influence 
of His love and Spirit, millions of the most intelligent, 
the most virtuous and benevolent of mankind. This 
central figure in history, Jesus Christ, remains unex- 
plained on Agnostic grounds. The Agnostic himself 
is forced to confess in the face of this fact the power of 
the truths of Revelation. "That one should rejoice in 
the good man, and forgive the bad man, and pity and 



52 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely 
indisputable. It is the glory of Judaism and Chris- 
tianity to have proclaimed this truth through all 
their aberrations." (T. A. Huxley, Chris, and Agnos., 
page 52. 

Agnosticism is filled with uttfcr despair. It is de- 
spair itself. When its adherents stand face to face 
with the problem of existence, they utter a cry which 
wrings from the heart a feeling of pity for their situa- 
tion, and it draws forth a prayer to heaven for help. 

Thomas Carlyle has described their true attitude : 
" It is mournful to see so many noble, tender and high- 
aspiring minds deserted of that religious light which 
once guided all such, standing sorrowful on the scenes 
of past convulsions and controversies, as on a scene 
blackened and burnt-up with fire, mourning in dark- 
ness because there is desolation and no home for the 
soul, or what is worse, pitching their tents among the 
ashes, and kindling weak earthly lamps which we are 
to take for stars. This darkness is but transitory ob- 
scuration. These ashes are the soil of future herbage 
and richer harvests. Religion is not dead. It will 
not die. Its dwelling and birth-place is in the 
soul ofman, and it is eternal as the being of man. 7 ' 

It is the look into the future that reveals the im- 
potency of the Agnostic and the strength of the 
Christian. An illustration of this truth is found in a 
contrast of views expressed by two men who both be- 
lieve in giving " an answer to every man that asketh 
a reason of the hope " that is in them. It will show 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 53 

fully the effect their views of life have on the destiny 
of the human race. 

Prof. Huxley says, " I know no study which is so 
utterly saddening as that of the evolution of humanity 
as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the 
darkness of pre-historic ages man emerges with the 
marks of his lowly origin upon him. He is a brute, 
only more intelligent than the other brutes. A blind 
prey to impulses which often as not lead him to de- 
struction. A victim to endless illusions, which make 
his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his 
physical life with barren toil and battle." (Chris, and 
Agnos., page 51.) 

The Apostle Peter takes a more hopeful view : 
"Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the 
knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, according as 
His divine power hath given unto us all things that 
pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowl- 
edge of Him who hath called us to glory and virtue, 
whereby are given unto us exceeding rich and pre- 
cious promises, that by these we might be partakers 
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption 
that is in the world through lust." 2 Peter i. 2-4. 
Eeligion is here made, to rest on the firm grounds of 
personal experience. If I want to know the laws of 
nature, I must study them in their operations, I must 
go to nature. If I want to understand the nature of 
the laws of God as they relate to man's moral refine- 
ment, I must study those laws as they are given in the 
word of God, No man has ever faithfully pursued 



54 WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC. 

this course who did not have his doubts removed and 
find himself able to say with Paul, " The law of the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath m,ade me free from 
the law of sin and death" and " I know in whom I 
have believed and am persuaded that He is able to 
keep that which I have committed to Him until that 
day." Here is the answer to Kant's three great ques 
tions, " What can I know? What ought I to do? 
What may I hope ?" 

It was the Sinaitic flashes of the moral law in the 
heights of the moral consciousness which led him to 
affirm his categorical imperative and sweep the world 
of duty with the greatest question : " What ought I 
to do? " The man of Galilee answers that question 
in its object, personality, necessity, opportunity and 
responsibility : " / must work the works of Him that 
sent me while it is day, the night cometh when no man 
can work." 

We are on a little Island in the Ocean of Immen- 
sity; this island is being forever swept by the roaring 
seas of doubt and contradiction. It is rocked by the 
nether powers of sin and death. Its shores are covered 
with the wrecks of by- gone generations in search for 
anchorage. As we stand here in uncertainty and great 
fear, we feel the touch of a hidden hand, but a hand of 
power. Above the cries of despair born of unbelief, 
we hear the voice of Him who was, and is, and is to 
come, saying: "I am He that liveth and was dead, 
and behold I am alive forevermore; and have the 
keys of death and of hell. I am Alpha and Omega, 



WHY I AM NOT AN AGNOSTIC, 55 

the beginning and the end. I will give to him that 
is athirst of the Fountain of Life freely— he that over- 
cometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, 
and he shall be my son." 

This full promise is the rainbow resting on the 
pillars of the material and spiritual nature of man ; 
and as humanity stands weeping on the naked heights 
of the twin mountains of Agnosticism and Atheism, 
the Sun of Eighteousness sends His resplendent rays 
through the watery veil of human sorrows, and throws 
forward on the dark, unknown future, this sign that 
will not fade away till man stands face to face with 
God in the new heaven and new earth. 



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